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Ultimate bird song!

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Subject: Ultimate bird song!
From: David Roots <>
Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 18:26:35 +1100 (EST)
In 1969, I mapped Murruin Creek, Little Wombeyan Creek (western Blue
Mountains) and 36 square miles of adjacent rugged wilderness. In a year I
saw nobody in those creeks, and not much has changed since. Its hands-on
country, with deep gorges and hanging valleys, casurina on the creeks and
dry eucalipt forest on the ridges. Lots of bird song, beautiful, but
irrelevant to the geology. 

I recorded a transect in the above two creeks, some 
10 miles of dead quietness but for waterfall interludes, using a 
cheap portable cassette recorder of the push-button type.

The tapes were transcribed by a lady from whom I expected complaints
of sore fingers, apart from geological jargon, and with some trepidation 
fronted up on the appointed day...

No complaints. Just a rapturous "The birds, the birds..." 

I hadn't realised the birds dominated the recording.
I was used the beauty of their totally undiluted song.  

She kept the tapes! 

Ever since I have intended to return with a portable digital recorder, 
and make another tape, free this time of voice-over interference.

No birder has trod those creks, I suspect, yet for thriling fidelity 
of singing, I have heard nothing like it ever. 

 david Roots.


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